Pat Condell: There's no racist like a liberal racist

I still find the term "progressive" in the way it's used preposterous. 

Another TDSB-related case of plagiarism

Matthew Lau, a young writer who has been the (credited) source of a number of items in Eye on A Crazy Planet had a recent article that he wrote for the website The Propagandist plagiarized by a Liberal Party staffer.

Even the headlines were identical.

It's good that the Liberal Party is finally taking notice of the important issues Matthew brought up in his article "The Toronto District School Board's plan to decolonize education".  The concern would seem more sincere if they actually looked into it themselves rather than just lift someone else's work and try to take credit for it.

Liberal Liar? Public Service Union's $20,000 payoff to Justin Trudeau

Justin Trudeau claimed he never took a penny while speaking as an MP. Any reasonable person could conclude he lied.

Pro-Israel passion from an unusual suspect at Toronto celebration

Fossils and ancient relics were part of the Yom Ha'atmaut (Independence Day) celebrations held last Tuesday by Israel's Consulate General in Toronto. No, I'm not talking about former Canadian Jewish Congress boss Bernie Farber, although he was there too. This year's party took place at the Royal Ontario Museum in the central gallery adorned by shining Medieval suits of plated armor, enormous dinosaur bones and Egyptian funeral artifacts.

Royal Ontario Museum

The party happened last Tuesday night and a line stretching from the Museum entrance on University Avenue extended almost half a block up to Bloor Street as the invited guests slowly filed into the party. Security was tighter than in previous years, but the Boston Marathon bombings the day before made people patient and sensitive to the need for caution.

Inside, almost a thousand dignitaries, diplomats and assorted other guests filled the air with pleasantries while noshing on deserts and sipping on some very palatable Israeli wines.

I bumped into Richmond Hill MPP Reza Moridi, who was, as usual, warm and engaging. We'd met previously at a gathering at the home of Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center CEO Avi Benlolo, whom, along with his charming wife, was also at the Yom Ha'atmaut party.

I also ran into the beautiful Natalie Weed, who had been the Mistress of Ceremonies at last year's celebration, but has since moved on to become a regional press secretary for the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. That was a very clever move on Tim Hudak's part, as it finally gives people a reason to look forward to hearing something from him.

The party was the first for newly appointed Consul General DJ Schneeweiss, who delivered a fiery speech extolling Israeli achievements and his nation's close relationship with Canada combined with an unapologetic assertion of Israel's right to self-determination.

The venue of this year's party was, while aesthetically interesting, was functionally less satisfying than last year's. The room was much smaller and it was difficult to move about among the crowd. But worse, there were only two bar stations, which made getting access to wine a frustratingly prolonged process.

After moving through a lineup that progressed with a tortoise's gait, and loaded up with as much wine as I could entice from the bartender, a felt a slight brush against my side. I turned to see that I was standing shoulder to shoulder with none other than Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Readers of this blog will note that I am a huge fan of Ms Wynne, who was awaiting being called to deliver her speech. I tried to get The Jewish Tribune's ace reporter Joanne Hill, who was laughing at me,  to get a picture of the premier and I together.  Joanne refused, probably fearful that she might become persona non grata at such events if such a picture ever emerged.

Moments later, the Premier was flanked by her entourage, which among others included MPP Moridi and my own representative, Dr. Eric Hoskins. Taking to the podium, Wynne delivered a speech which passionately lavished praise on Israel and boasted of her government's increased cooperation between the two jurisdictions. The speech sounded sincere and heartfelt, which will come as a bitter disappointment to her alma mater, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, where some politicized programs make activism towards elimination of the Jewish state part of their curriculum.

Curiously, Premier Wynne's government continues to push educational policies that encourage a type of narrow-minded, Marxist-based ideology that is anathema to liberal democracies like Israel and to the capitalist structures her government encourages. Whether this is an internal ideological conflict within the Liberal Party or if politicians are lazy and ignorant of what is happening under their watch are equally probable explanations.

But in any case, Yom Ha'atzmaut's celebrants in Toronto proved something that is painful for the fanatics sitting atop unions and institutions such as CUPW, CUPE Ontario and OISE. Because like it or not, acceptance for and affinity with the advanced, liberal bastion of democracy that is Israel is part of a mainstream discourse that leaves its bitter, radical opponents on the outside.

Liberal and NDP Proportional Representation pushers' open secret: It's about defeating Harper

Two prominent Members of Parliament and Elizabeth May's predecessor as head of Canada's Green Party were the speakers Thursday night at what was billed as a Town Hall to discus the merits of changing Canada's electoral system to Proportional Representation (PR).

Liberal Carolyn Bennett and former NDP leadership candidate Peggy Nash along with the Green's Jim Harris were at the 519 Church Street Community Centre in downtown Toronto at what could  more appropriately be described as a pep rally for PR and strategy session on how to defeat Stephen Harper's Conservatives.

Jim Harris, Carolyn Bennett &
Peggy Nash at the "Town Hall"

The speakers, moderator, organizers and hundred or so audience members in the room, with the exception of one, were uniformly there to express support for PR and to find ways advancing it as the way Canada is governed. The gathering it should be noted, was not a typical cross-section of Canadian voters. The 519 Centre is a hub in what is commonly known as Toronto's Gay Ghetto, a bustling, neon-lit strip of bars, restaurants and clubs. The Centre itself is a meeting place for a number of radical groups that are considered to be extremist, even within Toronto's "progressive" leaning Gay community.

Dr. Bennett, the St Paul's MP, was the first speaker and confirmed that the crowd there all supported changing the electoral system to PR, so she didn't try to sell the concept. She did discuss how to sell it to the rest of the electorate. Ontario held a referendum in 2007 on proportional representation and it was resoundingly rejected by 63.13% of the vote.

The consensus from the dais was that the reason the proposition failed was due to insufficient time and efforts devoted to education about Proportional Representation and its supposed advantages. This assumption reflected an unfortunate arrogance all-too-common to our political classes which presupposes that the public is stupid, and when we make decisions of which "progressive" leaders disapprove, it's because we are "uneducated."

There were quite a few suppositions by the speakers in at the Town Hall and the most glaring was that everyone agreed that Harper's Conservative government must be defeated at all costs. Indeed, assuming a uniform outlook, they didn't even bother to disguise their motive for wanting Proportional Representation - that it was the best way to prevent the Tories from getting a majority government.

Dr. Bennett, who was a member of Paul Martin's Liberal government, has only taken on her fervent advocacy of PR since her party lost power, and embraced it further since the Liberals lost Official Opposition status. It doesn't require an exceptional measure of cynicism to guess at the motive for her new-found enthusiasm for change.

The discussion by Bennett, Nash and Harris made that enthusiasm all the clearer when they made it clear that   the primary goal of electoral reform is that in through a system that necessitated cooperation between parties and made majorities more difficult, they would be able to keep Harper out of power. Oddly, no one mentioned the fact that when Harper had a minority government prior to the last election, the Liberals and NDP couldn't bring themselves to unite to form a minority government. There is probably a mathematical formula which calculates the level of desperation for power measured by the time since it was last held. I'm not sure of the actual figures for that equation, but the hunger from the Green, NDP and Liberal representatives to get more of it was palpable and made an appetite for any compromise to get it more palatable.

Their frustration was so apparent that one of the electoral devices discussed at the meeting was "vote swapping," which while not illegal, has a very unethical tinge about it. In essence, the practice would entail Liberal, NDP and Green voters communicating with each other and agreeing to trade votes in ridings where the other party's candidate had a better chance of defeating the Conservative.  The main concern expressed about that by Dr. Bennett was not the ethics but the fear that the Conservatives might infiltrate those lists and abuse them.

It fell to Peggy Nash to be the voice of reason on "vote swapping," reminding the room that many people died so we could have a democracy with a secret vote, and she didn't feel abandoning it, even to defeat Stephen Harper, was the right choice.

A member of Liberal Leadership candidate Joyce Murray's policy team then spoke to explain her proposal that riding associations could make a choice to cooperate and perhaps not run candidates in order to bolster the chances of the strongest opponent to the local Tory.

The Greens' Harris argued that reform was necessary because the Conservatives negative ads are so effective that they can destroy the standing of their opponents with the public. I've argued before that attack ads are a useful component of our political process.  After all, if a candidate who wants to lead a country is incapable of dealing with an attack ad from a fairly benign domestic political rival, how could they possibly function as a leader on the world stage, dealing with potentially hostile foreign interests?

After the presentations by the politicians, the floor was opened to questions from the audience. It was a moment of significant irony that I was the first person to ask a question and the response that followed.  I was the only person who spoke out against PR at the meeting and pointed out that the two MPs on the panel had passed that minimum threshold of getting a plurality in their riding. If that bar were lowered and representatives need not get that but only a small percentage of the national vote, you were guaranteed to have, among other things, Nazis in Parliament.

That prospect is neither far-fetched nor unrealistic, because that is what is happening right now in Europe with their legislatures elected through Proportional Representation. But that point infuriated the panel's moderator, John Deverell. Visibly agitated at my pooping on his party and perhaps trying to invoke some version of Godwin's Law, he interrupted me and tried to prevent me from finishing my question, saying I was lying and didn't know what I was talking about.

During her presentation, Peggy Nash complained that Harper`s majority government didn`t allow proper debate and questions in Parliament. The irony of Deverell attempting to do just that in a gathering proposing to change that system seemed utterly lost on him.

But I refused to be bullied into silence and pointed out that it would be a disgrace that in a public meeting that ostensibly is for the purpose of improving Canada`s democracy, he was trying to prevent the asking of a question he didn`t like and I continued.

Raising another aspect that I felt would get traction with that particular audience, I noted that there are many people opposed to legal abortions in Canada and political parties who want laws to that effect. If at some point, in order to cobble a governing coalition together, the balance were to be held by a `Pro-Life" party, we  are virtually guaranteed to have abortion laws in Canada again and I asked the panel to respond to that concern.

Jim Harris and Carolyn Bennett both spoke and in essence gave the same answer. They said that Canada would have to enact a higher threshold for party status than in countries like Italy and Israel, which are teeming with parties that only require 1% of the vote to get a place in their legislatures.

That response was not particularly encouraging. Even if it were as high as the 5 or 7 percent that Dr. Bennett suggested, fringe parties which would never be able to get a plurality in any riding in Canada would be able to have Parliamentary representation.

There are some basic facts about our system that those in our political classes who want proportional representation don't want to acknowledge and it's easy to understand why. They operate from the belief that many Canadians are disengaged from the political process because they feel "their vote doesn't count."  There is plenty of evidence to indicate that is not the case. When there is an issue or politician people care about, then the voter turnout is high. Toronto during the last municipal election is a good example, where more than 14% more people voted than in the previous two elections. Lots of people wanted the change that Ford represented and plenty felt threatened by it and both sides came to cast their ballots.

But rather than their votes not counting, many Canadians remain disengaged from politics because there simply aren't many politicians, from any party, that people feel are worth voting for. In short, the problem isn't the system, it's the crappy politicians who inhabit it.

Another facet of proportional representation that went unmentioned during the "Town Hall" was how that system is actually less democratic than our current one. When we cast a vote, we don't vote just do it to choose a political party but a person to represent us. That's particularly important given that parties frequently run on platforms and policies they have absolutely no intention of implementing if they get in power (remember Jean Chretien's GST promise, and all the lies Dalton McGuinty's Liberals ran on?).

With 'first-past-the-post' each MP has been elected by at least a plurality of voters who the politician will represent. With PR, even in the proposed mixed-member system, political parties, rather than voters will select who gets to sit in Parliament. We would have a number of MPs who couldn't even get the most votes in their own ridings. That seems a step back in democracy, not forward.

The Greens' Harris, during the pro-PR pep talk, trying to energize the audience, said that a small group of people can make a big change and they could be the people to bring such a change about.

The room was filled with older people, some men with pony-tails, lots of macrame vests and shirts replete with cause-promoting buttons. Making histrionic speeches and complaints, they looked and sounded like since the 1960's, their politics have matured as little as their fashion sense.

Harris was right was right about a few people being able to make a big difference. But it's doubtful he picked the right group to expect from whom to expect any major achievements and that seems for the best. With their primary focus of implementing PR mainly as a tactic to get rid of Stephen Harper, a sincere effort to advance democracy was secondary, if at all on their agenda.

Thomas Sowell on the hypocrisy of liberal/socialist elites

h/t Small Dead Animals

By crying wolf about `abuse` NDP`s Horvath does a disservice to women in politics

Politics is a tough business.

It`s not for the thin-skinned. It gets personal, it gets nasty, and the higher up you go,  the meaner it gets and that is how things have been since democracy began in ancient Greece.

Ontario NDP leader Horvath

For a politician to succeed, they have to be able to project strength and fortitude. So it was a bit of surprise last week when Andrea Horvath, the Ontario NDP leader, made a point of her own weakness and inability to  withstand pressure by accusing Premier Dalton McGuinty of `workplace abuse`and `bullying` because his Liberal MPPs criticized her demands for passing the budget and her personally.

Welcome to the big leagues, Ms Horvath,  And in her first big match up at the plate, she struck out with no balls. 

Aside from blinking when McGuinty threatened an election rather than enacting her amendments to his Budget, she embarrassed herself and her party by suggesting that her political rivals criticism of her was a form of workplace abuse and mistreatment. When making the nonsensical allegation, she even went so far as to engage in ludicrous theatrics by having her staff hand out postcards to reporters citing a Woman Abuse Research Consortium website on the impact of verbal abuse and other mistreatment in the workplace. 

Too bad she couldn`t squeeze out a few crocodile tears for added effect. 

The implication being that women can't handle the rough ant tumble world of professional politics at the same level as men, which as anyone who's seen Margaret Thatcher of Hillary Clinton in action knows couldn't be further from the truth. But it does appear to be the case with Ms. Horvath.

Compared to some of the insults politicians regularly endure, the Liberals saying she is `not to be trusted` and she `betrayed a deal`` are pretty mild. If those minor barbs were too much for Horvath to handle, imagine how she`s fold like a house of cards if she came under real pressure. 

Actually, you don`t have to imagine;  it`s a matter of public record. 

It`s unfortunate that we live in a time and a place of societal self-absorption, where anyone who disagrees with you is a `bully`and the highest status one can achieve is that of `victim.` 

We have a right to expect better than that from those who aspire to lead and make decisions for the public. 

I`ve argued before that attack ads, decried by some, are in fact a critical and necessary component of the political process. If a politician can`t withstand criticism from relatively benign domestic rivals, imagine how poorly they would  represent their constituents` interests when facing a real foreign adversary.  

The ability to withstand pressure is a process that weeds out politicians who aren`t up to the task of leadership.  Ms Horvath`s petulance and whining to the media in the face of that pressure showed where she falls in that process.

The future ain't what it used to be

You never know how things are going to turn out until they happen.  But the events of past years and the histories of the players on the world stage can give us some revealing clues about how 2012 may unfold.  So despite Yogi Berra's sound warning that "it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future," now that we're about twelve hours into the new year, I'm going to unleash my prognostications.

In Canada, we'll have a sound economic year. The next general election is about four years away, and the Conservatives have a solid majority, so the Canadian political scene will remain stable. The New Democrats will elect a new leader who is profoundly uninspiring and unable to connect with people in any meaningful way. The Liberals will sit back and watch NDP support gradually erode as the ineptitude of their parliamentary representatives makes itself obvious. The NDP and Liberals will do whatever they can to try to get attention for themselves, but the public will remain more interested in the latest Kardashian gossip than the teapot tempests the opposition parties try to stir up.

The battlegrounds that will form in the new year in Canada will largely involve the Labour movement and governmental austerity programs. Governments at all levels will attempt to reduce spending and their will be significant reductions in the number of public employees. Public service unions will try to make it an all-out fight, framing spending reductions as "a class war on the poor" and threatening horrors of cutbacks and social upheaval if the cuts occur.

What the public service unions won't realize until it's to late is that the public is fed up with them and sees through their self-interested hyperbole. We've reached the stage where most union members are disgusted with and humiliated by union leadership, who clearly are acting, not in the interest of the taxpayers or even public sector workers, but for themselves.

Union funded professional protesters like the Occupy movement, OCAP and their controlled mouthpieces like rabble.ca, will do little to sway the majority of Canadians who see them as a bizarre form of  paid lobbyists who utilize street theatre as their communications strategy.

The Occupy Movement itself will continue to desperately try to get attention and struggle for some relevance, but without any real success. The word is out on them;  it was never a grass-roots movement. Occupy was an orchestrated effort by public sector unions, socialists, Marxists, and their bigoted strategists like Kalle Lasn of Adbusters. These aren't new people protesting new problems, they are the same old full-time malcontents utilizing a new public relations approach. The camping-out technique did let them swell their usual numbers with the ranks of homeless, mentally ill and criminals, but the result was that their protests also featured assaults, rapes, murders, and drug-overdoses.

Occupy was characterized by incompetence evidenced through an inability to accomplish anything other than to demonstrate the intellectual bankruptcy of radical socialists who want to run the world, but couldn`t even effectively manage a campground.

The other domestic battlefield will be in education, where radical socialists are trying to indoctrinate future generations with the aid of hapless provincial education ministers. The public has caught on to this and with increased attention on the matter, a strong backlash is brewing.

In the US, there is a very good chance that the Republicans will implode and Barack Obama will be elected to a second term. Ron Paul, an isolationist extremist and crackpot, will not get the Republican nomination. But the infighting between him, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney leading up to the convention could create serious enough harm to let Obama recover from his slump in popularity.

A lot will depend on what happens to the US economy in the next ten months, and how Obama deals with crises like Iran`s posturing and nuclear ambitions. The Republicans may pull out a November victory if Gingrich of Romney emerges as the nominee and presents a reasonable, centrist candidacy that isn`t embarrassed by American Exceptionalism and presents sound economic alternatives. But the Republicans have a way of shooting themselves in the foot, so we`ll just have to see how things turn out. My actual prediction here is that the Republicans do capture the White House in the election, but I`m not going to bet the farm on it.

As far as the rest of the world goes, it`s going to be a mess. South America is going to have economic disasters and political upheavals, although on the bright side, Hugo Chavez may die and a responsible government could be restored in Venezuela.

Islamic extremism will continue to be a major threat to the civilized world. The middle eastern Arab upheavals will lead to Islamist regimes that claw back human rights. There won`t be the sort of full-fledged tyranny in any of them that emerged in Iran following its 1979 revolution, but that part of the world will become more dangerous and more extreme. The Palestinians leadership will conitue to give contradictory messages about its intentions towards peace while their incompetence and hate prevents any progress from being made. Israel, hamstrung by horrendous proportional representation system that almost guarantees government participation by religious extremest parties will muddle through the status quo for another year. The barbarity of the Arab upheavals and Iran, combined with the US election will reduce pressure for any meaningful progress in the Palestinian/Arab/Israeli peace process.

One very dangerous development that may occur is that Iran, facing economic and military pressure, may utilize its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah to start another war in the region to deflect attention from the Islamic Republic. If that happens, they will also be utilizing their useful idiot proxies in the west to wage a propaganda war on their behalf.

On the whole, 2012 will be another year where Canadians should be very grateful for having one of the safest, most prosperous and free countries in the world as their home.

Ontario voters choose McGuinty over McGuinty-lite

The real question is: when do the Progressive Conservatives in Ontario hold their next leadership conference?

Prediction: With the Liberals one seat short of a majority, McGuinty makes someone a sweet offer to cross the floor in the coming months.

The microcosm of Trinity Spadina shows Ontario voters are screwed

On Monday night, three candidates in the Provincial election vying for the downtown Toronto seat of Trinity Spadina participated in a debate at The Duke of York pub. While Trinity Spadina is not a typical Ontario riding, the candidates were indeed representative of their political parties, not only in the literal sense, but in the way their characters as individuals seemed to be representations of what their parties stand for. The outcome reinforced the reality that no matter who wins the October election, Ontario's voters will be the losers.

The candidates who appeared were the incumbent MPP Rosario Marchese of the NDP, the Liberal Party's  Sarah Thomson and Green Party candidate Tim Grant. Progressive Conservative Mike Yen, whose party has polled a poor third place in the riding in the last few elections, didn't bother to show up.

The audience of about 65 people were largely, but not entirely made up of partisans there to support their candidates and were, as was the case of the candidates themselves, often caricatures of what their respective political organizations represent. The NDP supporters were perpetually disgruntled and unkempt, the Liberals were intellectual bantamweights with a sense of elitist entitlement to rule, and the Greens were an odd, mixed bag obsessed with environmental issues while lacking cohesive positions on everything else.

Having the debate in a pub while liquor was available was for the most part a good idea. There was the odd exception, as in the case of the woman who identified herself to me as a former provincial Liberal candidate. She appeared inebriated and was constantly heckling and interrupting Marchese from the floor until a moderator finally had to tell her to behave herself.  I certainly enjoyed the night a lot more than I would have had I not had 5 stiletto martinis during its course, however, even that amount of alcohol couldn't`t make the NDP's representative seem less pathetically inept or the Liberal less hopelessly insincere and uninformed.

Marchese`s solutions to everything seemed to be more taxes and more government control of people`s lives. Obviously, as far as he`s concerned, government does such a good job of running things that we need to extend it to the point of  getting them to make junk food prohibitively expensive while we hand over every dollar of discretionary income to them. Government waste, duplication of services, and lack of accountability was outside their purview to address, while taking money out of taxpayers`wallets and throwing it at problems, and their cronies, seemed to be the obvious solution for the NDP.

Whereas getting a straight, honest answer from a Liberal seemed a more difficult prospect than discovering the God Particle in physics. In the case of Ms Thomson, she was also unclear as to why she would make a good representatives or what ideas she had other than "entrepreneurs will solve our problems" although since the question was on how to deal with nuclear power in the province, that answer seemed...well,.. let's say no less obtuse than Ms Thomson's other responses.

Ms Thomson herself is personable and charming. It's no wonder her mayoral bid received the support of Canada's most famous white-collar criminal, who seemed to prefer the prospect of feting Thomson at one of his garden parties to having to socialize with the brash, forthright Rob Ford, who overwhelmingly won the municipal election last year.

When asked by Greg Oliver of the Canadian Secular Alliance if they would abandon the discriminatory system of public funding for Catholic Schools and only fund the public school system, both Marchese and Thomson answered that they support continuing the system the way it is. When an additional question from the floor pressed Ms Thomson on how she felt about the ethics of providing public funding to one religious group's school and how she could justify tax funds being used for religious education, she seemed unwilling or unable to comprehend the question.

Rather than addressing ethics, Thomson deflected to self-serving political expediency, saying that her friend John Tory's campaign had failed on the basis of the same proposal, suggesting she buys into the belief that it (rather than his lack of charisma and good ideas) led to his defeat when he led the Ontario Progressive Conservatives. The questioner then pointed out that Mr. Tory's proposal was different - that Tory had proposed funding all religious schools, not none.

Ms Thomson seemed confused and unable to compute the difference between the two concepts and at that point declined to continue with a public answer.

The only candidate prepared to give an answer to that question based on the morality and not political practicalities, was the Greens' Tim Grant, who said unequivocally that he advocated incorporating the Catholic School Board into the Public System and would end religious education in public schools.

Grant is far and way the most intelligent and straightforward of Trinity Spadina's candidates. While as an individual he would clearly make the best representative, the Green Party lacks cohesion and leadership (most people couldn't even say who the Provincial Green Party leader is) and he stands virtually no chance of winning.

The riding's leanings make Conservative Mike Yen's  chances of winning Trinity Spadina only slightly better than Libby Davies' chances of winning the next Miss Canada Pageant, which makes the only two practical voting choices Sarah Thomson or Rosario Marchese.

As loathe as I am to do so, on that basis, for those not willing to take the risk of voting for Grant, I would have to endorse Marchese. His party's politics are abhorrent, his ideas are doltish, but Marchese is honest, approachable, is genuinely dedicated to serving his constituents, and is in politics for reasons other than personal vanity, which makes him better than the alternative.

________

One additional note about the debate, which was one of, if not the first provincial riding debate for the upcoming election in the province. It was organized by an extraordinary young woman named Terri Chu. Disillusioned by the partisanship of issues that she felt should not be politicized, she organized a series of salon evenings in her home, with expert speakers discussing a variety of issues, many of which touched on her passion of environmental health and sustainability. Those evenings grew in popularity since she began about a year ago to the point where her home could no longer accommodate them. She then started the Why Should I Care? group that puts on regular forums for discussion of issues that affect public policy. Anyone interested in upcoming events or learning more about Why Should I Care? can get more information through the group's website.

Is provincial Liberal candidate Sarah Thomson attempting to skirt election finance regulations?

Left in the mailboxes of Trinity Spadina residents

Updated Aug 27 based on additional info from The Globe and Mail (which in turn was based on info from this article).

Residents of Toronto's Trinity-Spadina riding have been the recipients of a surprise treat in their mailboxes this past week. A free copy of Women's Post.

Reports indicate that having it haphazardly turn up in mailboxes throughout the riding is something that has not happened before and it doesn't seem to be happening in other ridings. Women's Post is published by none other than Trinity-Spadina Liberal candidate Sarah Thomson, whose face, with the large caption "Sarah Thomson weighs in on the tough choices facing Ontario voters"  graces the copy that residents received without solicitation. Inside the summer 2011 issue, on the first printed page, is a full page editorial by Ms Thomson in which she presents an odd, rambling, boating analogy, the point of which is that Ontarians should vote for the political party for which she is running in the upcoming election.

Despite the ads and a few fluff articles about food, the issue is self-promotion for Sarah Thomson. Does this qualify as campaign literature? 

Ms Thomson, who has never held public office, has shown as a political candidate that she is not shy about being opportunistic. But using the opportunity as publisher and owner of her own magazine which she is using to promote her candidacy may or may not land her in hot water with Elections Ontario.

Elections Ontario regulations say that candidates cannot spend their own money on a campaign. If they do spend money on themselves, it must be through the campaign account and the maximum any individual can donate to an individual can donate to any candidate is $1240.00. Campaign literature must be identified as such and as authorized by the candidate of riding association, or a third party, but obviously a candidate cannot be their own third party.

The printing and distribution of the summer Women's Post would likely exceed the $1240 amount. An official at Elections Ontario who wished to remain anonymous said, "This is a grey area and we'd really need to take a close look at it to make a determination about whether it complies with the rules or not, and that will take a while."

Ms Thomson was an unsuccessful candidate in the last Toronto mayoral election. She was forced to withdraw from the contest due to dismal support. In the final days of the campaign, she lent her endorsement and active campaigning to her rival,  the Liberal former Deputy Premier of Ontario, George Smitherman. Many people speculated at the time that some sort of deal had been struck with the Liberals, and Ms Thomson's virtually uncontested candidacy for the Trinity Spadina nomination as Liberal candidate in the provincial election did nothing to dispel that speculation. Ms Thomson quickly expunged her harsh criticism of Smitherman from her website. She had written about him: "..Mr. Smitherman seems to forget, as we have witnessed with his inconsistent and disorganized transit plans and, of course, his history with the E-Health blunder. This is a classic move to increase the size of government without comprehensively studying whether it in fact can reduce costs.

Ms Thomson may find that the criticism she levied against fellow Liberal Smitherman may be mild in comparison to what she has to face from the electorate and the media. Ms Thomson's campaign office was contacted yesterday to comment on whether the Women's Post issue promoting her candidacy was paid for from her campaign or other sources. One of her assistants, after an interval, said that Ms Thompson would call back personally, but as of the posting of this, she has so far failed to return the call. Based on her response to inquiries made by The Globe and Mail, it appears that the summer Women's Post that was distributed was financed the way the magazine is usually financed, which is not through a political fund.

The Globe reports that Ms Thompson "said the magazine is regularly distributed within the riding. Before putting out the summer issue she made sure she wasn’t breaking any Elections Ontario rules, she said."

(NOTE: I know people in the riding and they don't recall the Women's Post ever being delivered to them prior to Ms Thomson's candidacy. That was echoed by staff for the riding's incumbent MPP, Rosario Marchese. I live in the riding next door and have not received a copy of Women's Post in my mailbox.)

Ms Thomson had been embroiled in a similar controversy during her mayoral run, when she also put herself on the cover of her magazine with the caption "Toronto's Next Mayor." A lawyer consulted by the Globe has said that Ms Thomson's use of the magazine to promote herself and her candidacy, as she did duing her mayoral bid, do not violate elections laws.

But this time, depositing the magazine in the homes of riding residents raises additional questions.

The current representative in the Provincial Legislature for Trinity Spadina, NDP MP Rosario Marchese, did respond to an inquiry about this, saying: "I wish I had my own newspaper that I could use as a vehicle for my election campaign. I know the people of Trinity Spadina very well. It's an intelligent constituency and I'm confident they'll be able to see what Ms Thomson is doing for what it is."


UPDATE: Now The National Post has picked this up too

Provincial Liberal candidate Farber politically exploits sister-in-law`s death against husband`s wishes.

Bernie Farber, the former head of the Canadian Jewish Congress, has been the default spokesperson the Toronto media has utilized for comment on issues related to the Jewish community for so long, he has become known as "The King of the Jews" in some circles.

An affable, decent fellow, Bernie has a right to his personal opinions, just like any other Canadian. But a number of people in the Jewish community, very few of whom have any direct involvement with the Canadian Jewish Congress, have taken umbrage at the idea that Bernie represents them.

Farber has been a major proponent of Hate Speech laws that restrict expressions of criticism directed at ethnic groups. But these laws are used selectively and only apply to `sanctioned` groups. Hate speech laws and the quasi-judicial Human Rights Commissions, staffed with appointees unqualified to make judiciary decisions, are being used against critics of radical ideologies that have used the fog of multiculturalism to obscure their undemocratic, racist, misogynist agendas.

With the Canadian Jewish Congress about to be folded into an umbrella group of Jewish community organizations, Farber has taken a leave of absence to run in Thornhill as the candidate for the Liberal party in the upcoming provincial election.

It appears Bernie`s presumption for speaking for others without their consent has run him into hot water again. Writing in Shalom Life, Faber criticises Tim Hudak, the leader of the provincial Opposition, trying to tie him to Health Care policies enacted by former Conservative Premier Mike Harris. Farber goes so far as to suggest the cancer-related death of his sister-in law in 2003, was related to Harris`policies and resulting poor hospital service when he wrote:

"my sister-in-law, suffering from breast cancer, found herself caught in the mire of Conservative hospital closures, nursing lay-offs and other cuts specifically to the cancer care sector. Joanne passed away in 2003. Had she been diagnosed today, with all the newly-funded resources in Ontario cancer care, with hospitals back up and running, with over 11,500 full time nurses now hired or re-hired, her chances of survival would have increased dramatically."

Farber should have checked with his sister-in-law`s husband first.

Commenting on Farbers`opinion piece, Michael Robitaille responded:

The sister-in-law Bernie Farber wrote about in this article was my wife. Contrary to what Bernie states, my wife Joanne received excellent health care at every level during her over 3 year struggle with cancer. From the staff at Credit Valley Hospital to Princess Margaret Hospital to Toronto Western Hospital, she received speedy, professional and excellent care. I honestly can't say anything negative in the overall treatment Joanne received. Sadly, Joanne succumbed to cancer but I want to state categorically, her death from cancer had nothing to do with any lack of health care or any deficiencies in her care. I find it callous, cold-hearted and opportunistic for Bernie Faber to use Joanne's death for political gain. Joanne is missed by me and my son Jack everyday and it is a shame to have her struggle with cancer thrown around like a political football by a candidate who knows better.

          Michael Robitaille

Between this and the resurfacing of his referring to his party leader as a `fear-mongerer`, Farber`s campaign is off to a less than auspiciuos start.

h/t Sassy Wire

Which Ontario provincial Liberal candidate accused his party leader of "fear-mongering"?

And the answer is:

Liberal candidate for the provincial riding of Thornhill..

Bernie Farber

Blue Whigs are moving to the Tories faster than the far left is moving to Ignatieff

A very interesting column from John Ibbitson in the Globe and Mail speculates that Stephen Harper's increasing support is coming from fiscally responsible Liberal voters at a greater rate than Ignatieff is siphoning votes from the NDP and Greens by moving his party to the left.

Ibbitson uses the term "Manley Liberals" for right-leaning Liberal voters, but I like "Blue Whigs" better.

Conflicting polls mask an emerging truth: As all parties contemplate a possible spring election, the numbers show the Liberal Party under Michael Ignatieff successfully draining support from the New Democratic and Green parties, just as it hoped to do.  

But it is paying a price, as John Manley Liberals defect to the Conservatives, increasing the chances that a spring election would return Stephen Harper as prime minister with a strengthened minority, or possibly even a majority, government.

Full article at the Globe and Mail

Social Scientist identifies liberal bias among social scientists!

Scientist discovers conservatives are an oppressed minority - at least in the Social Science field

SAN ANTONIO — Some of the world’s pre-eminent experts on bias discovered an unexpected form of it at their annual meeting. 

Discrimination is always high on the agenda at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s conference, where psychologists discuss their research on racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, stereotype threat and unconscious bias against minorities. But the most talked-about speech at this year’s meeting, which ended Jan. 30, involved a new “outgroup.” 

It was identified by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology. He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three. 

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals. 

“Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,” said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. “But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.” 

The entire article is at The New York Times

Test your morality

This test, created by social psychologists shows you how you compare to conservatives and liberals and where you fit in.

You might surprise yourself.

Bob Rae on Canada's continuing role in Afghanistan

Eye on a Crazy Planet is a non-partisan Canadian blog insofar as it takes positions on issues rather than political parties. (OK, I don't consider the NDP or Greens to be real political parties).

Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic Bob Rae reminds us that the Liberals understand the need for the defense of liberal democracy.

"The terrorists do not have a timetable. The terrorists do not have resolutions that say this is what has to happen and this is the day we have to do this and we have to do that.

The terrorists have a different objective, and we need to understand that as a House. Canadians have to come to terms with the need for this continuing engagement; they have to come to terms with the need for us to stay involved and stay engaged, not at the expense of our own people, not at the expense of our democratic traditions and not at the expense of how we do business as a country, but as partners."

Read more at The National Post

He doesn't quite have his old man's gift for words

Is Ontario Minister of Citizenship Eric Hoskins as clueless as he appears in this video?

Below is a video of Steve Clark, the MPP for Leeds-Grenville, asking Ontario Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Eric Hoskins, why Ontario is pursuing increased relations with Syria, a terror-supporting dictatorship.

Hoskin's non-sequitur response is to praise the Syrian-Canadian community, obfuscate, and avoid answering the question.

What?!

No one has an issue with the majority of Syrian-Canadians, who are fine citizens who came to Canada to escape from a totalitarian regime that Hoskins seemingly wants to embrace.

But the question was why is Ontario possibly moving towards increased relations with a terror-supporting state that was behind the murder of a Lebanese Prime Minister?

As much as I have issue with his introduction of the HST and his less-than-vigorous approach to keeping campaign promises, Dalton McGuinty's government has an excellent relationship with Israel, so I have no concerns the provincial Liberal leadership has gone over to The Dark Side in that regard.

Hoskins is new on the job, having won his seat in a bi-election in the provincial riding vacated by McGuinty-rival Michael Bryant, prior to the unfortunate incident where he killed an enraged bicyclist in self-defense.

Judging from what I see here, it makes me wonder whether Hoskins was put into cabinet way, way too soon, or if he should be there at all.

What kind of math do you use to promise to increase spending, freeze taxes, and lower debt all at the same time (and expect people to be stupid enough to believe you)?

this fine artistic rendition was stolen from Blazing Cat Fur

Smither-math!

Click "Smither-math" above to see Royson James' column describing how it just doesn't add up